Drinking water from sunlight

I thought this is super cool, a way to make drinking water even from salt water.
Solar Potable Water Generation
http://www.watercone.com/product.html

It's based on the libich ? (help with the correct spelling) cooler we learned of in school in grade 1 where water is heated then condensates and you get clean water.

I'm sure if one add a shiny reflector to shine more sunlight on the cone it will also generate more water.

So now that you know you can never again be caught adrift somewhere and complain you are thirsty...

 

Interesting.

 

You'd die of dehydration, before it made enough water to save your butt. Surface area is the key to that sort of thing.

 

Build a really big one, about the size of the VAB.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building

 

The recommend fluid intake is 3 liters a day, the cones produce ~1l/day. Seems like making them larger would have been the way to go.

 

One of my engineering courses had us make up a solar still.
Fun project & we tossed around the army surplus 'beach ball' design and also learned that T. Edison was a big fan of desalinators & tried to design one to condense fog for dorymen lost at sea in the Grand Banks fishery.

Edit- I unsucessfully looked about for a reference to the Edison invention, but stumbled on this:

http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm

Interesting bits

 

Edit: sorry my mistake

for some reason i cannot edit this
edit2: oh it worked, but now is all gone

 

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledisonpatents.htm contains the allegedly complete list of Edison patents, which contains many for electroplating, electrolysis, storage batteries and their elements, but I could not find on first try any patents for desalination apparati.

 

I feel your pain.

 

Does anyone here really drink 3 liters of water a day? I certainly don't; I'd spend my days running to the bathroom like a pregnant housewife.

That recommendation, commonly rephrased as, 'drink eight (8 oz) glasses of water a day,' is actually based on a person's total water intake -- including that contained in your food.

 

LOL, this was funny!

 

I see the watercone is selling for $60!
It is not such a revolutionary idea, just simple distillation.
You can make one with two bowls and a plastic bag.
Put a weight in a little bowl and put it inside a big bowl of salt water (or pee). Tie a plastic bag over the top, put a weight in the middle of the bag. The water will evaporate then condense on the bag and drip into the little bowl.
You could use two plastic bottles and a piece of hose.
Going one step further, build a sealed box with an angled glass/plastic top. Run a gutter along the inside of the lower edge. Attach a hose to the end of the gutter and fill your water bottle.

 

You can get an ISO approved version for boats and seawater distilling for $239.95

http://www.landfallnavigation.com/memss.html

 

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add a spell check to the process of ISO certification.

 

I looked that one up, and it supposedly only produces from half a liter to a liter of pure water a day. That isn't very much capacity for the money.... especially if you need water for more than one person.